In the Bildungsroman, the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of the — generally, young — protagonist. The Bildungsroman is regarded by some as a variation on the concept of the monomyth. Such themes are now often also portrayed in films (epitomic examples of which are The Matrix and Star Wars) and in animation.
Within the genre, an Entwicklungsroman is a story of general growth rather than self-culture; an Erziehungsroman focuses on training and formal education; and a Künstlerroman is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.
The list below, is an exhaustive list of books that partially or fully conform to the Bildungsroman. [Pleae note: this list was compiled from the Wikipedia page]:
The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow (1953)
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin (1899)
Beka Lamb, by Zee Edgell (1982)
Beneath the Wheel, by Hermann Hesse (1906)
Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell (2006)
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)
The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe (1980–83)
Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander (1964–73)
Citizen of the Galaxy, by Robert A. Heinlein (1957)
The Confusions of Young Törless, by Robert Musil (1906)
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)
Demian, by Hermann Hesse (1919)
The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson (1995)
Emile: or, On Education, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
Emma, by Jane Austen (1816)
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (1985)
The Famished Road, by Ben Okri (1991)
The Favourite Game, by Leonard Cohen (1963)
The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem (2003)
Glamorama, by Bret Easton Ellis (1998)
The Go-Between, by L. P. Hartley (1953)
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy (1997)
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1860–61)
Green Henry, by Gottfried Keller (1855)
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros (1984)
How Many Miles to Babylon?, by Jennifer Johnston (1974)
In the Beginning, by Chaim Potok (1975)
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (1952)
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
Jean-Christophe, by Romain Rolland (1904–12)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens (1839)
The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro (1971)
Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe (1929)
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (2002)
Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis (1954)
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann (1924)
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe (1722)
My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok (1972)
Der Nachsommer, by Adalbert Stifter (1857)
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
Netochka Nezvanova, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1849)
Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham (1915)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (1985)
Out of the Shelter, by David Lodge (1970)
Peter Camenzind, by Hermann Hesse (1904)
Pharaoh, by Bolesław Prus (1895) 1
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce (1916)
The Red and the Black, by Stendhal (1830)
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (2002)
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (1959)
Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Sorrow of Belgium, by Hugo Claus (1983)
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl (2006)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920)
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (2003)
The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass (1959)
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding (1749)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith (1943)
Der Vorleser (The Reader), by Bernhard Schlink (1995)
The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks (1984)
What Maisie Knew, by Henry James (1897)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, by J.W. Goethe, the paragon of the genre (1795)
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson (1919)
The World Made Straight, by Ron Rash (2006)
Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie (1981) 2
The Moor's Last Sigh, by Salman Rushdie (1995) 3
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Bildungsroman examples (pre-1930):
This list extends the examples of Bildungsroman contained in the main article. These are novels that trace the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from (usually) childhood to maturity. These are examples from before 1930. See Bildungsroman examples (post-1930) for more recent examples.
the 13th century Hrafnkels saga
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Jane Austen, Emma
Pío Baroja, El árbol de la ciencia (1911) (Engl. transl. The Tree of Knowledge, 1928)
Leslie Barringer, Gerfalcon
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë, Villette
Frances Burney, Evelina
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Charles Dickens, Little Dorritt
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest
Jeffrey Farnol, The Amateur Gentleman
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, the paragon of the genre
Maxim Gorky, In the World
Maxim Gorky, My Universities
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Hermann Hesse, Demian
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless
Daniel Owen, Rhys Lewis
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Bolesław Prus, Pharaoh (1895)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (the tale told of the creature's development)
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir
Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Adalbert Stifter, Der Nachsommer
William Makepeace Thackery, The Luck of Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackery, The History of Henry Esmond
Leo Tolstoy, Childhood/Boyhood/Youth trilogy
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884–85)
Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter
Voltaire, Candide (1759)
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall (a comic inversion of the Bildungsroman)
The Bildungsroman usually contains the following:
In the Bildungsroman, the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of the — generally, young — protagonist. The Bildungsroman is regarded by some as a variation on the concept of the monomyth. Such themes are now often also portrayed in films (epitomic examples of which are The Matrix and Star Wars) and in animation.
Within the genre, an Entwicklungsroman is a story of general growth rather than self-culture; an Erziehungsroman focuses on training and formal education; and a Künstlerroman is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.
The list below, is an exhaustive list of books that partially or fully conform to the Bildungsroman. [Pleae note: this list was compiled from the Wikipedia page]:
Bildungsroman examples (pre-1930):
This list extends the examples of Bildungsroman contained in the main article. These are novels that trace the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character from (usually) childhood to maturity. These are examples from before 1930. See Bildungsroman examples (post-1930) for more recent examples.